


how you get the girl

by kathillards



Series: girls like girls [8]
Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Jungle Fury
Genre: F/F, pizzas and flirting, post jungle fury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-25 01:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12519496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/pseuds/kathillards
Summary: Three times Camille came into Jungle Karma Pizza for barbecue chicken and Lily. —- LilyCamille





	how you get the girl

**Author's Note:**

> for week of toku ladies, day three. prompt was food, and it struck me that i had never actually written (or published, rather) a jungle fury fic, so i had to rectify that with my fave blonde gal pals and some pizza.

**how you get the girl**

i want you for worse or for better  
i would wait forever and ever

—- _taylor swift, how you get the girl_

.

The shop is empty when she comes in. It’s near closing time, so all the customers have cleared out, and the lights are dim without the sunshine of the day streaming through the windows. In the back, the kitchen is still a burst of bright light, but up front, everything is spookily still.

Camille takes a breath. She doesn’t really know what she’s doing here.

“Need something?”

Lily’s voice is soft, but there’s a smile in it that startles her when she looks up. Her eyes are warm; there’s no judgment in them. There never had been, though, not with Lily.

“Just… thought I’d say hi,” Camille says lamely. She’s still learning how to do the whole goody-goody thing. Part of her still wants to zap Lily’s face in on instinct. “Where is everyone?”

“I have the night shift,” Lily explains, coming around the counter to wipe the front of it down with a towel. “Everyone else is probably sleeping. We don’t get a lot of traffic this time of year, not this late, anyway.”

“Oh.” Camille looks around, fumbling for something else to say. “Are you… do you want help?”

Lily laughs. The sound of it is bright despite the fact that Camille instantly feels like she’s being laughed _at_ – but maybe she’s just paranoid.

“Oh, no, I’m almost done cleaning. If you wanna hang out, you can take a seat. There’s a pizza in the oven I was saving for myself, but I’d be happy to share.”

She’s so… _good_. So kind, all the time, even to people who don’t deserve it. Camille doesn’t know how she can stand being that way.

“That sounds nice,” she admits, and takes a seat carefully at one of the middle tables. Since there’s nobody else around, there’s nobody to bother her as she looks around the café, noticing all the wear and tear, the peeling paint and gum underneath the tables—but also how warm it is, how safe it feels here. How the whole place hums with the energy of the people who work here, who made it home.

Lily finishes off the counter and disappears back into the kitchen. Camille tips her chair back and tries to remember why she came here in the first place.

Maybe it was for peace and quiet. Or maybe it was to get away from Dai Shi—Jarrod, she reminds herself sharply. He’s Jarrod now, and he’s not terrible. He doesn’t treat her terribly.

Still. It’s nice to be alone sometimes.

The smell of pizza reaches her before Lily’s voice does. “I hope you like barbecue chicken, ‘cause it’s my favorite.”

Camille looks up to see a medium-sized—clearly meant for less than the usual group—pizza topped with barbecue chicken, tomatoes, and peppers drop onto the table in front of her. It does smell amazing, warm and spicy and fresh-out-of-the-oven. She’s still not used to eating a mostly human diet, so she often forgets to eat properly or at the right times.

And right now, she’s starving. “That looks amazing,” she says, then glances at Lily. “I don’t have to pay?”

Lily snorts with laughter. “God, no. Store’s closed, it’s just us. And friends don’t pay around here.”

Camille nods slowly as she breaks off a slice for herself and places it on one of the plates Lily had brought along. “I just… wasn’t sure.”

Lily’s voice goes quiet when she asks, “Not sure if you’re a friend? Camille, don’t be silly. You think we would let just anyone in here after closing hours?”

“Yes,” Camille says frankly, and a grin quirks Lily’s lips as if to say ‘ _point_.’ “But… I don’t know. I don’t expect us to be all buddy-buddy.”

“Then why’d you come here?” Lily asks in that patient way of hers that makes her seem so much above everyone else—once, Camille would have found it grating, but now it’s kind of nice. It means she’ll listen.

“I guess I was hoping,” Camille admits softly, and takes a bite out of her pizza to distract herself from the vulnerability. “This is delicious.”

“I know,” Lily beams. “RJ doesn’t really like to do ‘classic’ flavors around here, so I save those for me-time.”

“This is so much better than chocolate banana,” Camille says, digging in with relish. “Why did he open a pizza parlor if he doesn’t know how to make pizza?”

Lily giggles, a sound as inviting as it is sweet, and it makes Camille’s heart flutter, just once. “He knows how to make pizza, he just thinks he knows _better_ how to add toppings. And he doesn’t.”

Camille tosses her hair. “Typical guy.”

“Got that right,” Lily grins, lifting up her own slice of pizza in a mock-toast. “It’s so nice to have another girl around, since Fran left on her world tour with Dom. Have you thought about working here?”

“I have, but I would rather die than wear zebra print pants, all offense intended.”

Lily smiles at her. If it had been Dai Shi—no, Jarrod—she would have gotten a murderous glare and a threat. Even now that Jarrod is better, more rehabilitated, she doesn’t joke around with him like this. But Lily is easy to talk to, easy to be with, even with all the tension tugging Camille inside out.

“I get that,” Lily says. “I keep trying to get him to change the outfits, but he says they’re part of the brand. And Casey and Theo, those traitors, agree with him, but I think they just don’t want to go shopping with me to find a decent uniform.”

“I could go shopping with you,” Camille blurts out before she can think it through. Immediately, she stops, horrified, but Lily’s smile only brightens. “I mean… if you want.”

“I would love to,” Lily gushes, reaching out and squeezing Camille’s free hand. “Maybe you could even find some way to make this uniform less…”

“Less an affront to human eyes?” Camille offers, trying to regain her calm, and Lily grins at her. “That would be nice.”

“Tomorrow,” Lily says firmly. “Unless you’re busy with Pai Zhua.”

“I’m free in the morning,” Camille says, a slow smile spreading across her face. The thought of having plans—having plans with _Lily_ , doing something besides retraining herself, being with someone other than Jarrod—it feels nice.

“Then it’s a date.” Lily winks at her. “Don’t be late.”

.

At a certain point, she gets used to Jungle Karma Pizza right at the edge of closing hours, when there’s no people milling around and getting food everywhere, and, on three days of the week, where Lily is always waiting with a barbecue chicken pizza to catch up with her.

It’s not quite a routine, but it’s almost there.

Tonight, Lily looks up as soon as she enters, and frowns. “Something wrong?”

Camille hadn’t realized her bad mood was so obvious, but she supposes she should have, because her boots land loudly on the tiled floor and her face feels pulled into lines of anger.

“Nothing,” she mutters, stalking over to her—their—usual table in the middle of the empty shop. “It’s just… Jarrod.”

“Ah,” Lily says sympathetically, picking up the plate of pizza that’s already done and waiting for her and coming over to their table. “Boy troubles. I can relate.”

Camille glances at her sharply. “You can? But I thought you and Blue—sorry, Theo—were doing so well.”

Lily smiles, a little sadly, and props her head on her palm. “I love Theo, but…” She shakes her head. “Never mind. It’s not important. Tell me about Jarrod.”

“He just doesn’t _get it_ ,” Camille sighs, tilting her head back until it hits the chair and not blinking at the brief burst of pain. “He’s so gung-ho about _participating_ in the academy this time and being this perfect role model and finally having people like him… he expects me to care about it, too, and I don’t. I mean, I like being at the academy, but he puts so much effort into being popular and I don’t wanna deal with that.”

Lily looks amused, but she wipes it off her face when Camille looks back at her. “So, school drama? I get that, but honestly, it’ll be over soon—nothing lasts for long there. As long as you remember that you’re there to learn and get better, you will.”

“Yeah, but he keeps inviting me to parties and tutor sessions or whatever and I’d rather…” Camille swallows the rest of that sentence. “I don’t know. We just had a fight about it and I had to get away.”

Lily pats her hand gently. “You guys will be all right. You’ve been through a lot together.”

“Maybe…” Camille sighs. “Maybe I don’t want to go through everything with him this time. I mean, can’t he go through things on his own, and I can go through things on my own? Isn’t that how this whole… human business works?”

“How would I know?” Lily teases. “I’m a power ranger.”

This tugs a laugh out of her, despite her black mood. Lily’s face sobers after an instant as she lifts her cup of coffee to her mouth and takes a sip before continuing.

“I can’t tell you what to do about Jarrod, but if I were you… I’d take some time. You’ve been with him—or with Dai Shi—for a long, long time, Camille. Maybe you need more things that are just your own, y’know? Like… what’s your favorite pizza?”

Camille blinks at her. “I… don’t know. I like this one.”

“This is _my_ favorite pizza,” Lily says, grinning at her. “You need your own. Come on, there’s enough dough left over for us to make one more tiny one tonight.”

“What—I don’t know how to make pizza!” Camille protests, but Lily is already leaping to her feet, her half-eaten slice forgotten, and taking Camille by the hand and into the kitchen.

“It’s super easy,” she assures. “Look, here’s the dough, I’ll knead it out for you. Just get any cheese and any sauce you like, and then we’ll add toppings.”

Camille grumbles a bit, but it serves as an efficient distraction from Jarrod. She picks out garlic alfredo sauce for the base, and mixes up three different types of cheeses, and then Lily throws open the fridge and tells her to pick out any toppings she wants.

At some point, she ends up with food on her hands and cheeks, and Lily is giggling over a spot of flour on her nose, but the pizza ends up in the oven and the atmosphere feels light and floaty and nothing at all like the heavy, dank aura that had been hanging around her at the academy lately.

“It shouldn’t take too long,” Lily says, picking up a towel. “Come here, let me get that.”

Camille stands still as Lily dabs at her face to get rid of the sauce streaks and the flour and god knows what else is there. She’s very close, enough that Camille can smell the lingering scent of her fruity perfume—it’s faded, from the events of the day, but it’s still nice. Lily’s eyes are warm and crinkling at the edges with laughter as she leans in close to swipe something off her eyebrow.

“Your turn,” says Camille after a moment of breathlessness, and steals the towel so she can return the favor. Lily giggles again and lets her at it, although she’s remarkably more clean than Camille is. Still, she finds her fingers hesitating, pressing the towel in for moments too long at a time.

She can count Lily’s eyelashes. She wonders, distantly, if this is how it’s supposed to be—being human, having friends, being happy. Is this what it’s like? She has no point of comparison.

“What were you saying?” Camille asks, when the silence is starting to grow and pound and reverberate and the oven timer still hasn’t gone off. “About Theo, earlier? I thought… I thought things were good.”

“They were,” Lily says quickly, the warmth in her gaze softening to something faraway. “They are… I guess it’s just not fair to him. For me to be so…”

Camille furrows her brow. “You’re what? Anything less than the perfect girlfriend? I wouldn’t believe that if you paid me.”

Lily laughs, looking away. “For me to have feelings for someone else,” she admits quietly.

Camille stares at her. “What—who?” Then, belatedly, “Sorry, that’s—that’s probably personal, isn’t it? Forget I asked.”

“It’s okay,” Lily says with a smile that seems a little on the wrong side of genuine. “I told him about a week ago. He took it pretty well, but you know… it’s still hard.”

“Yeah,” Camille says, the word echoing oddly between them. “A lot of this stuff is just hard. I guess… I thought you had it easier, down here in human world.”

“I still think we do,” Lily says, shrugging. “It must have been lonely, being immortal for so long, just waiting for him to come back…”

Camille thinks back to those years, the eternal misery with the ever-present spark of hope at the end, the waiting and waiting… and all for him to not care. To have never cared. Only Jarrod cared, and that because he didn’t know her except for what she did for him. Didn’t know who she had been in those battles before, all the things she had done, the monster she had been.

“I know…” Camille pauses, her voice on the edge of breaking. “I know I’m getting better—I’m trying to be better. But every time I see him, I remember who I was. And it’s not his fault, because he didn’t ask to be possessed but…”

Lily’s hand tangles with hers, intimate in a way that feels different than usual, back here in the kitchen with the bright lights and the hum of the pizza oven behind them.

“But feelings happen anyway,” Lily finishes quietly. “It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. And—you really are getting better, Camille. Look at you—look at this!” She gestures around the kitchen, scattered with cheese and sauce and pizza dough. “Did you think even a few months ago you would be here with me?”

“No,” she admits, following Lily’s gaze around the kitchen. Warmth blooms inside her – a feeling like being at peace, here with the fire in the oven and the golden lights above them. “This is a lot nicer than where I thought I’d be, though.”

Lily smiles, and for half a heartbeat, Camille thinks she might move in, closer and closer, but the oven dings and Lily steps back before she can realize that her pizza’s done.

“Ready to see your masterpiece?” Lily giggles, opening up the oven door and carefully pulling out the pizza. “It needs a name. Something like… the Chameleon Special.”

“Boring,” Camille sniffs. “What about the Camille Cheese? So I actually get my name in there.”

“So self-centered,” Lily teases, easily slicing the pizza into fourths. “All right, here we go. Ready for the moment of truth?”

It doesn’t look quite as delicious as Lily’s basic barbecue chicken, but Camille takes a hesitant bite out of the slice Lily hands her and it doesn’t taste as terrible as she’d been afraid it would.

“I think RJ could dig it,” Lily says thoughtfully. “You’ve got corn, bacon, pears… it’s just weird enough for him to put it on the menu.”

“I want a ten percent cut of the profits,” Camille says immediately, and sends Lily into a fit of laughter. They eat the pizza straight from the dish, not even bothering with plates, and despite how weird the flavors are, somehow, she likes them together.

.

It’s not like she and Jarrod had ever officially been dating, but it still _feels_ like a break-up when she leaves Pai Zhua, having passed her test, gotten her tattoos, and not wanting to stay behind to teach little kids and live at the academy forever.

She goes straight to Jungle Karma Pizza, because where else would she go? It hadn’t been an angry fight, but she still feels a little empty.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” Lily sing-songs, holding up a bottle of wine. Camille stops in the middle of feeling sorry for herself to look at her in surprise. Lily grins and adds, “Well, you’ve graduated, we’re adults, and the boys are out. Why shouldn’t we have some fun?”

“Don’t think I’ve ever had human alcohol,” Camille admits, but it sounds intriguing enough that she sits down at their table and watches in interest as Lily pours her a glass, then one for herself. The wine is clear white and seems to twinkle in  the glass.

“This is the best of the options RJ had,” Lily tells her. “I figured you wouldn’t be much for beer or whiskey. You strike me as a wine girl.”

“Cheers,” Camille says, although she’s still not sure what the difference is, and toasts Lily’s glass with hers before taking a sip. The wine is—it’s strong, and fruity, and sort of reminds her of Lily’s perfume, although the taste is a bit hard to swallow at first.

But it’s not the worst thing she’s ever had. Lily’s smiling at her when she looks up.

“It goes great with the Camille Cheese Special,” she teases, sliding a plate piled with a slice of Camille’s pizza and one of her own barbecue chicken over to her. “At least, I assume it does.”

“Very few things do,” Camille says, and Lily laughs. “How are things here?”

“Same as always.” Lily watches her dig in delicately, using a fork and knife on her pizza because it’s the only way to avoid all the various toppings falling off as you eat. “I was actually… thinking about leaving, at least for a little bit.”

Camille looks up with a jolt of surprise. “What? Leaving where? The pizza parlor?”

 _Or Ocean Bluff?_ She doesn’t add that, not wanting to hear that answer.

“Not permanently,” Lily rushes to assure her. “No, I love it here—Ocean Bluff is my home. And it has… all of you. But I got invited to coach a dancing camp this summer and it’s about five hours north of here. And… I really wanna go.”

“Oh.” Camille sits there and chews slowly, thinking. “Five hours isn’t that bad. And it’s just for one summer?”

Lily shrugs, swishing her wine around in her glass. “Yeah, but… I guess I wanna do something new with my life. And I love teaching dance here, but the audience is kind of limited, and I’m stuck using RJ’s room as a studio. I want my own studio, and new students, and new places to see.”

Camille reaches for her wine and downs a gulp that probably lets the next thing slip out of her mouth more easily than it would have otherwise: “Want me to come with you?”

Lily’s eyes widen. “What? Oh, no, Camille, I wouldn’t want to take you away from—”

“Away from what?” Camille asks with a wry smile. “From Jarrod? He’ll be fine without me. And I’ll be fine without him. Besides, this isn’t _my_ home. I was here for you guys and now…” She shrugs, hoping the pounding of her heartbeat isn’t too obvious. “I’m done with my training. I have friends, but… if you want me to go with you, I would. It’ll be fun—a new adventure.”

Lily stares at her, looking for something in her face, though Camille can’t guess what. After what seems like forever, her expression finally lightens. “Honestly… that would be amazing. The reason I haven’t left before is because… Theo and Casey don’t wanna leave. Obviously, RJ owns the place, but Casey has his teaching and so does Theo and… they love it, they really do. I love it too, but I just… need a change.”

“And Fran and Dominic keep visiting and making you jealous with all their cool stories?” Camille adds with a delicate sip of wine.

Lily laughs. “Yes, that too. It sounds like so much fun… but I don’t wanna intrude on their couples’ adventure.”

“Then we’ll make our own,” Camille says, toasting the air with her glass. Lily’s smile brightens. “Just the two of us, out here in California. It’ll be fun.”

“It will,” Lily agrees, sounding light and happy for the first time the whole conversation. She leans over and presses a finger to the corner of Camille’s lips. “Hold on, you got something here.”

They’re not sitting facing each other, more side by side and relaxed, so Camille doesn’t look into her eyes as Lily swipes sauce off her face. But her hand doesn’t move when she’s done, and Camille tilts her head to find Lily looking at her, blue eyes soft and searching and just a little nervous.

“Do I have—” Camille begins to ask, but then Lily closes the gap between their lips and her question trails off in a gasp that turns into a kiss.

It’s hesitant and sweet, and tastes exactly like Lily’s barbecue chicken pizza—Camille doesn’t stop to consider what she tastes like, from her own pizza—and after a moment of fumbling, both of them turning to get the angles right, she gets the hang of it. She can’t remember kissing anyone like this, not in recent memory, and not so warm and wonderful, not the way Lily’s kiss sends fissures of pleasure all the way down into her bones.

“Sorry,” Lily breathes when they part, her thumb still running across Camille’s cheek gingerly. “I just—I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.”

Camille feels her lips quirk upwards slowly. “Me too,” she admits.

Lily’s eyes brighten in surprise and pleasure. “Really?”

Instead of dignifying that with a response, Camille pulls her in again. Lily hums into the kiss, the rhythm reestablished in a second, and this one is much deeper, warmer, steadier. The glow of delight in her chest that had started with the first kiss blossoms into something brighter and happier than she can ever remember feeling before.

For so long, she’s been thinking of tomorrow in abstract, a faraway future, a distant dream, but now, sitting here with Lily and pizza sauce on her lips and kissing her like she’s never kissed anyone before, it feels so concrete. Like she can reach out and grab that shimmering sun in the air and hold it close and never let it go.

Tomorrow, they’ll start their adventure. Tonight, she doesn’t have to let go of the sun.


End file.
